Welcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. If you would like your posts included in the next Carnival, please email me, faustaw2 “at” gmail “dot” com.

This week’s big story: Brazil continues its ascendance as a diplomatic powerhouse for the hemisphere. Last week thirty-three countries met in Brazil for the first Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development. Today president Lula hosts French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who’s visting the country to bring about bilateral cooperation in several areas, including the production of defense submarines. I’ll be discussing Sarko’s visit in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern, which you can listen to here.

Combined with a revamped Plan Colombia, the FTA can then promote both human rights and the overall quality of life in Colombia. One of the loudest proponents for the FTA is Asocolflores, Colombia’s flower exporters association. Dependent on the U.S. market, its companies employ 200,000 Colombians. This and other export industries create jobs and opportunities that provide poor Colombians alternatives to growing coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

Real change will not come from bulletproof armor, helicopters, and tanks, but will depend on Colombia’s institutional capabilities and the economic opportunities it can offer its citizens. The United States should focus Plan Colombia on improving justice and human rights, and pass the FTA to improve economic opportunities for both countries’ citizens. President-elect Obama’s campaign promised change; our regional partners could use some, too.

The only problem were the train delays. As I mentioned earlier, passenger trains must wait for freight trains and there is only one track in each direction (for brief parts of the trip there is only one track), so you must expect delays. There was one delay I didn’t expect, however. Yesterday afternoon the train left Philadelphia during a huge rainstorm, and then the train stopped somewhere between Philadelphia and Trenton for over an hour. I was glad I wasn’t in an airplane trying to land in Philadelphia or Newark.

What we didn’t know was that the storm had knocked out power for central New Jersey, which affected the train lines. Trains were backed up in both directions of the Eastern Corridor. When we finally got to Trenton at 6:45 I waited for the 4:45 train to Princeton Junction. You know it must have been something when a guy from the NJ PBS affiliate, NJN news, was walking down the platform getting soundbites.

Will I do it again? Absolutely, yes. I’ll probably fly to either Chicago or Colorado and then ride the Zephyr. It is an extraordinary experience. I just got this comment from Melissa, who I met in the train,

Fausta,
My husband Tim and I had the pleasure of dining with you on the zephyr this week and we wanted to tell all of the cynics out there that a trainride should be experienced by everyone at least once in your life. I don’t even consider myself an outdoor person, but when you see the sights on the train, the only word that can describe it is majestic. We live in the city and usually drive from california to denver but, on the train, you get to see the “Real America” that we tend to forget about. It’s also a very nostalgic experience that my husband and i will have for the rest of our lives. Who’s waxing nostalgic in an overcrowded airplane or when fueling at the pump. Who I ask you? WHO?

II only watched for a few minutes, but Matt has a penchant for contradicting himself: first he shows a jazzy powerpoint slide of how good Havana would look if only the USA would bring trade and prosperity, and then he mentions that nearly every other country in the world cn trade with Cuba.

Yet people only earn fifty cents a day. Why is that?

Matt just can’t seem to get it, so let me spell it out for him: Because COMMUNISM DOESN’T WORK, Matt!

To the editor: I felt enough had been written about the Princeton Public Library’s recent “human rights” film festival. However, since three letter writers have chosen to keep the subject alive, a response is warranted.

One letter denounced “hard-right anti-Castroites” who protested the inclusion of pro-Cuba films. Well, if it is “hard-right” to loathe a dictator who brooks no dissent, jails political prisoners, and has clung to power for a half-century, I plead guilty.

A few questions for the writer: Does this make you a “hard-left pro-Castroite?” Should you have mentioned that your wife organized the festival? Among those “hard-right anti-Castroites,” do you include the elderly man who spoke about his years in Castro’s prisons? Finally, does Cuba, which Human Rights Watch calls the “one country in Latin America that represses nearly all forms of political dissent,” really deserve to be lauded in a festival about “human rights?”

Festival organizers even embellished their films with a guest speaker:- a particularly noxious woman who would not even concede that Castro’s gulag is less than democratic. For the former prisoner, it was literally insult heaped upon injury.

Another letter praised the festival’s “courageous” pursuit of free expression. With apologies to Warner Wolf, give me a break! “Courage” implies steadfastness despite a threat of harm, such as daring to dissent in Cuba, or boarding a raft hoping to reach Florida.

In the case of our film festival, a few activists used other people’s money (taxpayers) to show films promoting their own world view. Attendees learned about the plight of the millionaire Dixie Chicks, whose “rights” were apparently trampled when radio stations refused to play their music.

At last year’s festival, we heard that corporations, by their very nature, are “psychopathic” and in need of therapy. Yet each year, festival organizers are praised by their colleagues, and letter writers commend their “courage.” My point is that ascribing “courage” to people who dabble in radical politics insults to those who actually deserve that adjective.

It is vitally important to mention that in the festival’s three years, there has not been one offering about the Muslim/Arab world, where “rights” are truly in short supply.

What about the right of a female to drive, to study, to avoid genital mutilation? The right of an Israeli teenager to have pizza without being vaporized by a suicide bomber? The right to publish cartoons mocking the “prophet” Mohammed? Not a syllable in three years. Is it because these “courageous” librarians are afraid to offend Muslims, who fight back with fatwas? Is it because condemning Islamic abuses doesn’t mesh with their world view, in which the West is the source of all evil?

If the festival organizers want “dialog,” let it commence. We might begin by asking whether Princeton’s overburdened taxpayers wish to subsidize a festival that is less about “human rights” than it is a pretense for promoting a political agenda. And, oh yes, those “psychopathic” corporations might consult their therapists about the wisdom of supporting people who loathe their very existence. signedPaul J. Budline

Update, 4PM: Val Prieto and I were Captain Ed’s guests, and you can listen to the podcast here. We discussed the many inaccuracies and omissions from the Today Show, not the least of which are the imprisoned dissidents, like Vladimiro Roca and Oscar Elias Biscet, Coco Farinas (who’s protesting for access to the internet) and also dissidents like Martha Beatriz Roque Escabello and Ladies in White (wives, mothers, and sisters of 78 dissidents who were imprisoned for distributing books). Later in the program Dymphna and Ziva called in. Great news for Maria Conchita Alonso fans, she’s producing a documentary and will be in a movie about Venezuela.

Billboards to Highlight Spanish Complicity in Cuban ExploitationMay 18, 2007, Miami, FL – The Spanish government is being denounced by Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty (http://bucl.org) in a new advertising campaign aimed at educating the public about oppression in Castro’s Cuba.

The multimedia campaign, unveiled today, consists of bus shelter panels that target areas near the Spanish consulate and the Spanish Cultural Center, both in Coral Gables, Florida. An online component, launching today, will steer readers searching for certain information about Cuba and Spain to BUCL.org.

“This effort marks the first of several coordinated activities aimed at exposing those countries, companies and institutions that aid and abet the Castro regime in oppressing the Cuban people,” said Henry Gomez, the spokesman for Bloggers United for Cuban Freedom. Gomez continues:

“Spanish businesses are dealing directly with the Castro regime and are helping perpetuate Cuba’s totalitarian system by complying with that country’s unfair labor laws and enforcing an apartheid system in which Cubans are not allowed to use the same facilities as tourists. From the Spanish perspective, there is no reason to pursue change in Cuba, they are benefiting from exploitation of Cuban workers and would like to see the status quo perpetuated.”

The Socialist Spanish government of Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero has been leading an effort to normalize relations between the European Union and Cuba. Those relations have been strained since the Castro regime’s crackdown on and jailing of 75 dissidents and independent journalists in 2003. In April of this year, Spain’s foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos visited Cuba and met with Raul Castro, while noticeably snubbing Cuban dissidents that had requested a meeting with him.

“It’s important for the Spanish government and business interests to know that freedom-loving Cubans will not forget who conspired with the Castro brothers and against their liberty when the inevitable fall of the dictatorship comes,” said Val Prieto, editor of BabaluBlog.com and member of Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty.